Had a mover's insurance claim get denied over a single word in the 'force majeure' clause

The policy said it covered 'acts of God' but not 'weather events,' and a blizzard in Denver last winter was ruled the latter. Anyone else had a contract hinge on a definition like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

nancyramirez27d ago

Feel for you, that's such a frustrating way to get a claim denied. They hide behind these tiny word differences that mean everything to them and nothing to us in the real world. It makes you feel totally cheated when something obvious like a blizzard isn't covered. I'd be furious too.

samreed27d ago

Yeah, that exact thing happened with my car insurance after a hailstorm. They called it "atmospheric precipitation" and not an "act of God" so they tried to deny it. I just kept calling and asking them to explain the real world difference to me, calmly, over and over. I asked for a supervisor and made them point to where the policy defined those terms separately. After a few rounds they just gave in and paid, probably to get me to stop. It’s exhausting but sometimes just being a persistent, polite nuisance works.

fisher.jessica27d ago

That's the kind of thing that makes you read every line of a contract now. It's like the difference between "natural disaster" and "severe weather" on a flight delay page. They use words that seem the same to us, but in the fine print they're totally different. You see it in software updates too, where they call something an "enhancement" instead of a "fix" so they don't owe you anything. It feels like a game where they keep moving the goalposts on what common words mean.